All Alternative Energy Stories and Videos

Dow Chemical Co. is set to showcase its most recent energy-saving innovations at the International Builders' Show in Florida. The company's Building Solutions team will be displaying a range of insulation, air sealing and renewable energy solutions for homeowners. "Building a high performance home starts with sealing the building envelope," said Dale Winger, residential market manager, Dow Building Solutions, in a Jan. 5 news release. He added that the products on display would reflect the growing demand for more energy-efficient homes. Latest developments include a variety of spray polyurethane foam products to reduce air and moisture infiltration causes by gaps and cracks in buildings, as well a selection of rigid foam insulation designed to meet the needs of specific above-grade wall applications. As well as polyurethane and other foam solutions, the company will be showcasing its Dow Powerhouse Solar Shingles, a solar-power product for residential homes expected to be commercially available in the US market by mid-2011. IBS 2011 is one of the largest annual light construction shows in the world and will take place Jan. 12-15 in Orlando, Fla.

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt got another marketing jolt Monday, when it received the North American Car of the Year. The car that runs on electricity for 40 miles (65 kilometers) before a backup gas engine kicks in beat out the Nissan Leaf, another electric, and Hyundai Sonata in the annual ceremony on the first day of media previews for the Detroit auto show. Forty-nine auto journalists from the U.S. and Canada made the picks. The vehicles are judged on innovation, design, safety, handling, driver satisfaction and value. It's the latest in a string of accolades for the Volt, which went on sale in limited markets in December and costs $40,280. It was named the Green Car of the Year at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November and Motor Trend and Automobile Magazine named the Volt the 2011 car of the year the same month. General Motors Co. Vice Chairman Tom Stephens said the Volt "represents the soul" of the new GM, on the rebound after enduring a government-led bankruptcy in 2009. GM sold between 250 and 350 Chevy Volts in December and Nissan's sales totaled less than 10 Leaf sedans in the past two weeks. Production for both is slowly ramping up. It will be well into 2012 before both the Volt and Leaf, which costs $32,780, are available nationwide. Early demand is strong: About 50,000 people already are on waiting lists. The Volts are being assembled in Detroit. GM predicts it will sell 10,000 of them in 2011 and between 35,000 and 45,000 in 2012. By way of comparison, Chevrolet sold 187,250 Malibu sedans in the first 11 months of 2010 with sticker prices that start at $21,975.

U.S. researchers say they've produced a new class of solar cells that can repair themselves much like plants do through photosynthesis. By using carbon nanotubes and DNA, scientists at Purdue University have developed solar technology aimed at increasing service life and reducing cost, a university release said Tuesday. "We've created artificial photosystems using optical nanomaterials to harvest solar energy that is converted to electrical power," Jong Hyun Choi, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, said. Photoelectrochemical cells that convert sunlight into electricity contain light-absorbing dyes called chromophores, similar to chlorophyll molecules in plants, that degrade due to exposure to sunlight. "The critical disadvantage of conventional photoelectrochemical cells is this degradation," Choi said. The new technology gets around this problem in the same way nature does, by continuously replacing the photo-damaged dyes with new ones. "This sort of self-regeneration is done in plants every hour," Choi said.

Some Florida businesses are squeezing a trickle of fuel from algae, claiming they can help power the world. But right now, a few expensive drops in the bucket are all they have to show. On 1,000 acres on the northwest shores of Lake Apopka, Orlando businessman Nick VandenBrekel touts a new crop for Florida that he says can help boost the state's economy as it provides another source of alternative energy. His company, Agrisys, has raised more than $25 million from investors and plans to break ground this quarter on ponds and a small refinery where VandenBrekel says Agrisys will be able to grow algae, process it into an oil, and refine the oil into jet fuel, diesel or gasoline. The operation, he says, will be "the world's first large-scale, vertically integrated algae-to-biofuels facility."

Sure, you've heard about Big Government. But have you seen its energy bill? With $25 billion in annual power and fuel costs, the U.S. government is the largest single energy consumer in the nation's economy, and among the largest in the world. Of course, the 500,000 buildings the government leases or owns include not only office space, but supercomputers, hospitals, and aviation safety radar facilities. And the 600,000 vehicles that Uncle Sam has to tank up include those conveying troops engaged in active combat. For years, it has been clear that there's a big opportunity in the sheer size of this energy footprint. The U.S. Congress has been setting federal efficiency goals since 1978—in hope not only of cutting costs and foreign oil dependence, but also of leading the way for energy savings in the private sector. The Obama administration now is seeking to ramp up that effort dramatically—with the help of an unprecedented $4.5 billion in stimulus funds to be spent by next September entirely for federal green building and renovation projects. By executive order, the federal government is aiming to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent by 2020.

An office park in Alhambra is about to start drawing a quarter of its electricity from the devices. It joins commercial properties in more than 40 cities statewide. Behind a chain-link fence next to a parking structure at an office park in the San Gabriel Valley sit five softly humming gray boxes that could change the way homes and offices are powered. On Tuesday, the boxes — each somewhat bigger than an SUV — will begin generating enough electricity to power about a quarter of the complex, saving the property owner about $500,000 a year in electricity bills. The Energy Servers use fuel-cell technology to create low-emission electricity. The product, developed by Bloom Energy, a Sunnyvale, Calif., start-up, has been hailed as an innovation that could change the power industry. "We were convinced that this was a technology that was extraordinarily good," said Wayne Ratkovich, chief executive of Ratkovich Co., which owns the Alhambra office park. "And we're not paying as high of an electric bill, so we'll save a lot of money."

The world's biggest gas-guzzling nation has limits after all. After seven decades of mostly uninterrupted growth, U.S. gasoline demand is at the start of a long-term decline. By 2030, Americans will burn at least 20 percent less gasoline than today, experts say, even as millions of more cars clog the roads. The country's thirst for gasoline is shrinking as cars and trucks become more fuel-efficient, the government mandates the use of more ethanol and people drive less. "A combination of demographic change and policy change means the days of gasoline growing in the U.S. are over," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry. This isn't the first time in U.S. history that gasoline demand has fallen, at least temporarily. Drivers typically cut back during recessions, then hit the road again when the economy picks up. The Great Recession was the chief reason demand fell sharply in 2008.

Deepwater Wind, a company based in Providence, Rhode Island, has drawn up plans for what could be the largest wind farm in U.S. waters, the company announced last week. The proposed farm would generate a huge 1,000 megawatts of power and would be located 18 to 27 miles off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts at a depth of 52 meters—considerably deeper than any other large scale wind project to date. By moving into deeper waters, turbines can harness stronger, more sustained winds. And the massive turbines the company plans to use—each capable of generating more than 5 megawatts of power, with blades rising 150 meters above the water's surface—will be nearly invisible from shore, thereby avoiding potential legal battles with coastal communities that perceive the turbines as eyesores. Four-legged steel platforms rising from the seafloor will allow Deepwater Wind to operate in depths more than twice those of conventional steel "monopole" wind turbine platforms. As water depth increases, the diameter of monopoles must increase exponentially, making them uneconomical in water deeper than about 20 meters. By using a four-legged design, company officials say they will be able to work in depths that were previously prohibitively expensive.

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens' TV commercials blasted the airwaves in 2008 with his big idea to get America off foreign oil imports: natural gas and wind energy. Two years later, let’s just make that natural gas. Since the billionaire’s plans for the world’s largest wind farm fell apart in the Texas Panhandle, Pickens has edited his much-hyped “Pickens Plan” to focus primarily on his other big business interest: natural gas. Touting 1.7 million Pickens Plan supporters, he’s now pushing Congress to pass legislation that would offer incentives to convert 18-wheelers and fleet vehicles to run on compressed natural gas, or CNG, rather than diesel. He said if just 8 million of those trucks switch to the domestic-produced fuel, it could cut in half the amount of foreign oil imported by the United States. “I’m all American,” Pickens said on Friday. “Any energy in America beats importing.” The businessman said he is now looking to Canada as a place to build his 500-megawatt wind farm, because he couldn’t get a deal done in Texas.

On Saturday, Nissan delivered its first battery-powered Leaf to a customer in Northern California, helping bring the nation one step closer to a future in which our cars, trucks and buses will be electric drive. That future will include a mix of electric vehicles: battery vehicles (BEVs) like the Leaf, plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) like Chevrolet’s Volt and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) like the Honda FCX Clarity and Mercedes B-Class F-CELL. All four vehicles are or soon will be in customer hands in limited numbers in California. In fact, the first FCEVs were delivered to California customers back in 2008. With the Leaf to be delivered tomorrow, and the Chevy Volt soon to follow, it’s not too early to begin asking how these vehicles stack up. Fuel Cells 2000 has done just that, using company or government data to compare in comfort, range, performance, cargo space and other customary measures. The resulting chart is available at: http://www.fuelcells.org/info/ElectricVehicles.pdf

When the Obama administration Nobel prizewinning Steven Chu took over from Bush/Cheney oil man Bodman at the Department of Energy, he prioritized clean energy innovation. By December last year, to speed the development of clean energy solutions to prevent climate change, he had overhauled the patent review process, hiring experts so he could put clean energy patents on a fast track. Looks like that investment in patent-reviewing brains is paying off. An upward trend is clear by the beginning of 2010, according to the data from the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index. And this quarter, a record number of clean energy patents have been granted. Overall, among technologies, solar led clean tech with 88 solar patents, followed by wind with 71. Auto companies filed mostly fuel cell patents. GM filed 9 hybrid-electric vehicle patents and 30 for fuel cells. Samsung also went heavily into fuel cells with 21 patents, and a couple for solar technologies. GE filed 19 wind patents (and 3 for fuel cells).

Advanced Biofuels industry leaders should use the unique Green Racing focus of the American Le Mans Series to promote and advocate for the adoption of advanced biofuels according to Bob Kozak, Senior Green Racing Editor and founding board member of Advanced Biofuels USA in an opinion piece published today on AdvancedBiofuelsUSA.org. This week American corn growers, Growth Energy, and NASCAR came together to announce NASCAR’s decision to “go green” by using corn ethanol E15 in its Nextel Cup series in 2011. A small step for mankind perhaps, but it pales when compared to the testing and adoption of innovative green automotive technologies in the American Le Mans Series races where cellulosic E-85 is becoming the norm. Kozak urges the advanced biofuels industry to emulate the moves of Growth Energy and American Ethanol and use automotive racing, which boasts the largest audience of any sport both in the US and worldwide, to educate the public on the benefits of American grown 2nd and 3rd generation non-food biofuels.

An aquarium in Japan is shocking visitors with its Christmas display -- using an eco-friendly electric eel to illuminate the lights on its holiday tree. Each time the eel moves, two aluminium panels gather enough electricity to light up the 2-metre (6 ft 6 in) tall tree, decked out in white, in glowing intermittent flashes. The aquarium in Kamakura, just south of Tokyo, has featured the electric eel for five years to encourage ecological sensitivity. This year, it added a Santa robot that sings and dances when visitors stomp on a pad. "We first decided to get an electric eel to light up a Christmas tree and its top ornament using its electricity," said Kazuhiko Minawa, on the public relations team for the Enoshima Aquarium. "As electric eels use their muscles when generating a charge, we also thought to get humans to use their muscles to light up parts of the tree and power Santa." Visitor Sumie Chiba was fascinated with the display but questioned the practicality of eel energy for domestic use. "If this was possible, I think it's very nice and extremely eco-friendly," she said.

Responding to a lawsuit by an Indian tribe, government lawyers said Monday that officials properly approved a 10-square mile solar farm to power San Diego and asked a judge not to stop the project. The Quechan Indian tribe has sued in San Diego federal court to stop the Imperial Valley Solar project, which would provide 709 megawatts to San Diego Gas & Electric if fully built. The tribe said that the environmental reviews of the project didn't fully consider the impact on artifacts and sacred sites. But in a filing with the court, lawyers for the Department of Interior said officials did what was required of them and a judge can't second-guess those decisions unless they were "arbitrary and capricious."

They might be best known for space travel, but the folks at NASA are determined to shape the future of commercial aviation. The agency says airliners need to be quieter, greener and more fuel-efficient. To attain those goals, NASA handed out nearly $6 million in contracts this week to two defense industry giants: Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. NASA’s goal is to develop technology that would enable future aircraft to burn 50% less fuel than current models, cut harmful emissions in half and shrink the geographic areas affected by obnoxious airport noise by 83%. The agency hopes to develop concepts for airliners that could go into service by 2025. Engineers from Lockheed’s famed-Skunkworks defense enclave in Palmdale won about $3 million to develop the concept. Northrop engineers, working out of the company’s space park in El Segundo, were given $2.65 million. The engineers will have 12 months to develop a concept for an aircraft that can fly near the speed of sound at a range of 7,000 miles, carrying up to 100,000 pounds of either passengers or cargo. But don’t expect the traditional “tube-and-wing” design for the aircraft’s wings and fuselage. This project is all about thinking outside the box.

Featured Product

The Darfon G320 is the microinverter solution for today's high-power solar modules. The G320 handles 60- and 72-cell modules up to 350W DC and outputs up to 300W AC. The G320's 3-phase configuration accommodates the electrical distribution systems of most commercial buildings and to reduce, if not eliminate, the need for expensive transformers. The G320 comes in four voltage/phase configurations, so it can be installed in residential, commercial or utility applications.